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Yoast SEO changelog

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20.6

Today's release of Yoast SEO 20.6 has enhancements and fixes to improve your SEO work. The update features a new readability analysis — a helpful addition alerting you whenever you use too much center-aligned text. Check out more details now! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.6 in our release post!

Enhancements

  • Improves performance when the SEO data optimization has not been completed. Props to @PypWalters.

20.5

Our latest release, Yoast SEO 20.5, includes enhancements and fixes to elevate your SEO journey. One of the most exciting updates is our improved Google SERP preview, now aligned with Google's current styling for both mobile and desktop. This allows you to see how well your snippets are optimized for the search result pages. Read all about it! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.5 in our release post!

20.4

With Yoast SEO 20.4, you can reduce your site's carbon footprint and improve your SEO with just a few clicks. The crawl optimization settings let you turn off crawling for certain URLs, scripts, and metadata that WordPress automatically adds. Previously only available in Premium, but now available for all! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.4 in our release post!

20.3

Yoast SEO 20.3 is out and comes with several enhancements, fixes, and improvements. With an improved highlighting feature and enhanced support for the Portuguese language, Yoast SEO 20.3 helps you find where you need to make SEO edits quickly and easily. Upgrade now and take your website's SEO to the next level! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.3 in our release post!

20.2.1

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a security issue in the post editor.

20.2

In Yoast SEO 20.2, we've improved our innovative indexables technology. We've developed a faster and more reliable way of indexing your site's data. In turn, we make better use of this data to improve your site's SEO. Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.2 in our release post!

20.1

Create a more inclusive online world with Yoast SEO 20.1. Our improved inclusive language analysis provides real-time feedback and offers suggestions to help your content reach a broader audience. For our Premium users, there's a bonus - a new Mastodon integration to take your online presence to the next level. Get it now! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.1 in our release post!

20.0

We're proud to introduce a brand new settings interface in Yoast SEO 20.0. We've worked hard to make this interface both beautiful and helpful. It's now much easier and enjoyable to work on your SEO. Plus, it's the start of much more cool stuff to come! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 20.0 in our release post!

19.14

Yoast SEO 19.14 introduces the first round of improvements to the inclusive language analysis. We've made the analysis smarter in detecting terms in certain contexts and improved the feedback we give writers. Check it out! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.14 in our release post!

19.13

Yoast SEO 19.13 proactively fixes an issue we found in the upcoming release of the Gutenberg editor. This release of the block editor breaks the link functionality when used in conjunction with Yoast SEO. The Yoast SEO release works around that so users can keep adding and changing links. Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.13 in our release post!

Enhancements

  • Prevents an incompatibility with the upcoming Gutenberg 14.8.0.

19.12

In Yoast SEO 19.12, we're introducing the inclusive language analysis — previously only available in Yoast SEO Premium. This will help you get feedback on words that might exclude part of your audience and get inclusive alternatives. This is only available in English for now. Plus, it is opt-in. Try it! Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.12 in our release post!

19.11

Yoast SEO 19.11 is out now. We're optimizing the Yoast SEO plugin to use fewer resources. This helps make your site faster and more efficient. In this release, we're doing this by streamlining your database. Find out more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.11 in our release post!

19.7.2

Other

  • Removes the cURL minimal version check from the Site Health page, as it was causing issues.

19.7.1

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown in combination with certain plugins that change the standard login page URL.

Other

  • Changes the copy in the robots.txt comment.

19.7

Yoast SEO 19.7 is out today! We’ve rolled out some general enhancements, bug fixes, and security improvements in this release. Go check it out! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.7 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements

  • Improves the handling of fatal errors in the front-end by preventing Yoast SEO to run in the login page, allowing users to access their dashboard.
  • Excludes empty custom post type sitemaps from sitemap_index.xml.
  • Introduces a new filter wpseo_sitemap_post_type_first_links that can be used to add links at the start of the first sitemap page for post types. Props to @jamalbou.

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug in the default editor where image elements would lead to repeated requests for that image source while editing content.

Other

  • Adds new disabled toggles to the Crawl settings tab in the General page.

19.6.1

Other

  • Fixes compliance with the wordpress.org plugin guidelines.

19.5.1

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where a fatal error would be thrown on the front-end when Yoast SEO 19.5 was used with an older version of Yoast SEO Premium.

19.4

Yoast SEO 19.4 is out today! In this release, we’ve rolled out some improvements to our Schema structured data implementation. Additionally, we've fixed several bugs and added a couple of small enhancements to ensure you get the best user experience with Yoast SEO. But that's not all, we also have a new integration page coming in this release. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 19.4 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

18.9

Yoast SEO 18.9 is out now! In this release, we have improved the first experience users have with the plugin. The first-time configuration takes users by the hand and guides them in properly setting everything up so that search engines understand their site. Make sure to run that first-time configuration to see if you’ve filled everything in correctly! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.9 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

18.8

Did you catch the latest update from Google? Today they made some small changes to how they read XML sitemaps. But you don't have to worry about that - today's Yoast SEO 18.8 update already applies the latest standards. Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.8 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements

  • Removes XML sitemap image properties title and caption following deprecation by Google.

18.6

Meet Yoast SEO 18.6: a small Yoast SEO update, fixing a number of bugs, including several bugs related to the Wincher integration. With the Wincher integration, you can track the rankings of your articles in the search results. If you haven’t checked that feature out, please do so! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.6 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where a version mismatch caused broken styling in WooCommerce select fields when linking products.
  • Fixes a bug where keyphrases could show up multiple times in Wincher table.
  • Fixes a bug where the Wincher connection flow would fail on certain installations.
  • Fixes a bug where the Wincher integration could throw a fatal error on PHP 8.0+.

Other

  • Adds a disabled Wincher integration toggle to the Network admin/Multisite Integrations tab.

18.5.1

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where a fatal error would occur on the site health page if WordFence was installed and active.
  • Fixes a bug where a fatal error would occur on PHP 5.6.

18.4.1

Other

  • Reverts the 18.4 release due to errors in the WordProof integration.

18.4

In Yoast SEO 18.4, we're launching a new integration with an innovative new service called WordProof. WordProof offers a way to add timestamps to your content and add those to the blockchain to prove ownership. Try it out now! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 18.4 in our release post in English or our release post in Spanish!

Enhancements

  • Adds the possibility to timestamp your Privacy Policy page and your WooCommerce Terms and Conditions page by use of a WordProof certificate.

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where the Google preview would display wrong breadcrumbs for child pages.
  • Fixes a potential error related to the has_ancestors column of our indexables table. Props to @junaidbhura.

Other

  • Sets the minimum required WordPress version to 5.8.

17.7.1

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where the notification to start configuring Yoast SEO would also been shown on existing installations.
  • Fixes a bug where Yoast addons would not inherit the auto-update settings from Yoast SEO.
  • Fixes a bug where changing the auto-update settings of another plugin could stop Yoast addons from being auto-updated.

17.4

Yoast SEO 17.4 is out today! This release comes with several fixes and enhancements to help database performance on larger sites by cleaning up data and streamlining retrieval. Happy updating! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.4 in our release post!

Enhancements

  • Improves two queries used to determine whether or not a site has been fully processed using our SEO data optimization. This should prevent potential slowdowns in extremely large sites.

Bugfixes

  • Fixes a bug where the url property in the search page schema would be empty.
  • Fixes a bug where a duplicate canonical tag was output for web stories created with the Web Stories plugin. Props to swissspidey.
  • Fixes a bug where a race condition could occur that caused the rewrite rules to be flushed on every page request when using a persistent cache like Redis. This may speed up your site’s load times if it’s using persistent caching.

17.3

Yoast SEO 17.3 is out today! This release includes general bug fixes to some SEO assessments and improvements to indexables data management. Now is as good a time as any to start optimizing your content with Yoast SEO! Read more about what's new in Yoast SEO 17.3 in our release post!